Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson gave a speech at the University of Michigan in which he first proposed what he called the “Great Society.” So what of the Great Society on its 50th birthday? Sadly, there’s little to celebrate.

If you centralized pencil making on Capitol Hill, pencils would be of one-tenth the quality at ten times the price – and the only way people would buy them is if the government used its police powers to force them to.

Assuming that the purpose of a health care industry is to prolong and improve human life, legislating away money as the economic mechanism for clearing the market and substituting in its place time is the worst possible allocation of resources.

Last week, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, MPAC, yet another government panel that you probably didn’t know existed, voted to impose massive payment reductions upon doctors who see patients under Medicare.